All Hallow's Eve
by AncientCovenants
Summary: And so it happened that on one fateful night, a certain Avenger was discovered as being less superhuman and more supernatural.
1. Sweet as a Spider

**Title:** All Hallow's Eve

**Synopsis:** And so it happened that on one fateful night, a certain Avenger was discovered as being less super_human_ and more super_natural_.

* * *

Natasha was perfect… or about as close to perfect as one could get. She was triple threat: smart, beautiful and deadly; which made her the perfect spy… _and _the perfect assassin. And aside from the part where she could snap your neck without even breaking a sweat, she was an absolute wonder to work with.

No, really.

You wouldn't think it but, while she was professional when she needed to be, behind the scenes she would sit and listen if you needed to talk. She'd give you a touch here and there, and on the rarest occasion, a hug, physical comfort going a long way towards helping the healing process.

And damn it, but the woman made the most heavenly cup of hot cocoa you could ever imagine. Well, okay, it was a toss-up between her's and Bruce's. But Bruce's was somewhat spicy like ancient South American chocolate so while it was definitely scrumdiddlyumptious, sometimes you just wanted some good old fashioned hot cocoa with optional whipped cream and marshmallows. Yum.

The cocoa isn't really the point here though, this is:

Besides being absurdly adept at what she did, Natasha Romanoff was trusted teammate and valued friend to the newly assembled Avengers.

And so it happened that despite all this, on one fateful, frightful night, Natasha was discovered as being less super_human_ and more super_natural_.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Holy Cannoli! I haven't written in ages! But All Hollow's Eve is fairly soon and it's my absolute favourite holiday... And, hey, it's 2013 and 13's always been a lucky number of mine, even if it's not my_ favourite_ number... Sorry, 13! I love ya though!

So enough about moi, how are you homo sapiens and assorted company liking the story so far? Or do you hate it? Despise it? Wanna toss it off the top floor of Stark Tower? What? That's not a thing? It should be a thing... a real thing. And I should control the tesseract and the whole universe... and it shall be mine!

What was I saying before Loki's hypnotic gaze put me under his spell? (Hmm... it makes more sense if you can see that I'm sitting in a movie theater near a cardboard box-thing advertising Thor: The Dark World and a certain Trickster God is staring at me...)

Right! Love it? Hate it? I do have more written down (read: typed up) but I felt like this was more of a prologue to the story than part of the actual story itself. My goal this story is to (a) actually finish it and (b) have it be more than a one-shot. Or a two-shot.

Will I be able to write a full four to five chapter story, no matter how short the chapters may be? Will I go through with writing an unrelated bonus chapter (It's still All Hollow's Eve themed, so not completely unrelated) after this story has ended? All of these are perfectly valid questions that even _I_ don't have the answer to!

Wish me luck!

**P.S.** I promise to try to write more story than author's note next time. Sorry!


	2. Bloody Hell

**Title:** Hallow's Eve

**Synopsis:** And so it happened that on one fateful night, a certain Avenger was discovered as being less super_human_ and more super_natural_.

**Warning:** If you're squeamish about blood why are you reading an All Hallow's Eve story? You have been thusly warned.

* * *

When Natasha came home after a nearly week long SHIELD mission that was only supposed to have lasted a few days, it was still pitch black outside. Well, about as pitch black as New York City can get at night anyways. It being the middle of the night, she wasn't completely surprised that no one was around when she got in.

This suited her just fine. She hadn't eaten in almost 87 hours because there had been a rumour going around that her mark tended to slip a truth serum into the foods and drinks of new employees that lasted more than 3 days. It was a paranoia-driven play, yes, but effective… except in Natasha's case. Her record of not consuming anything resembling sustenance was just past 90 hours. But even so, towards the end, she'd started to fade. As a result, she was ravenous and, as exhausted as she was, she really had to get some food into her system or else.

Dropping her belongings next to the island in the kitchen, she made her way to the fridge. The first thing that hit her was the smell: chicken parmesan. Courtesy of Mean Green's mild mannered counterpart, no doubt… It smelled divine; but it was too well cooked. There had to be something… She opened the freezer.

Bags of mixed vegetables and at least four kinds of ice cream stared back at her from their place next to her sought-after prize. The frozen packs of store-bought meat drew her attention, raw and frosty red. She took one out, a large cut of prime steak and briefly considered eating it cold before wrinkling her nose; that wasn't nearly as appetizing as hot, pulsing bl-

She shook her head and licked her lips to keep from salivating. Putting the slab of meat on a plate, she plopped it into the microwave and eagerly waited for it to defrost. When it was done, the red ice that covered it before had melted into luscious, delicious life-blood; not nearly as hot as she'd like it, but it would do.

Natasha took the plate out and elegantly lifted the steak with two perfectly manicured blood red nails. She tipped the blood on the plate into her mouth and eyed the steak with anticipation.

"Natasha…"

Natasha froze.

No. There was no way she'd missed someone still up, not with her training.

Except that when she'd got in, she'd simply assumed that everyone had already turned in to bed. And, what, with it being nearly three in the morning at the time, the assumption had seemed perfectly valid.

She hadn't taken into account that some of them couldn't sleep.

Slowly, she turned around to face the one that had interrupted her feeding. Her eyes met familiar brown bespectacled ones. She internally let out a sigh of relief. Out of all the Avengers, maybe she could convince this one not to tell her secret, maybe, out of all of them, he'd understand…

"I can explain…" she started.

He was fast, she'd give him that. She'd barely even blinked before the emergency alarms were blaring throughout the residential levels of the newly dubbed Avengers' Tower.

Natasha put the steak down and closed her eyes in defeat. She suddenly wasn't very hungry anymore.

"Go ahead—explain. You have three minutes before the others get here."

But the words wouldn't come. For three minutes, Natasha stood there, a lump stuck in her throat. And for the first time since she was a little girl being trained by the Red Room, she felt like crying for real.**  
**

And neither of them said a word.

It didn't last though, it was merely the calm before the storm, brief reprieve before:

"What is it? What's the emergency?"

"You better have a damn good reason for interrupting my beauty sleep, Jolly Green…"

The Hawk just narrowed his eyes, silently surveying the scene for any possible threats.

Natasha silently begged Bruce not to say a word with her eyes. Her efforts were in vain.

"She's a vampire."

And then, all Hell broke loose.

* * *

**A/N:** Now when I say sustenance, I mean of _any kind_. The average human can last about three weeks without food but only about three days without water. To vampires, blood is both food _and_ drink. Which sucks for Natasha (completely unintentional pun, I swear)…

But luckily for her, she's not your average human. And while just under four days may seem a bit on the low side for a supernatural being, I wanted to make it so that if someone decided to take a closer look at her, they'd note that she was merely super_human_. Which is what everyone thinks to begin with…

But, of course, there's more to her than meets the eye… and more story to come.

'Til next time,

AncientCovenants

**P.S.** See? An author's note shorter than the chapter… you're welcome. :)


	3. Black Holes and Revelations

**Title:** Hallow's Eve

**Synopsis:** And so it happened that on one fateful night, a certain Avenger was discovered as being less super_human_ and more super_natural_.

**Warning:** Long chapter... well, for me...

**A/N:** Lots of revelations are made within... and this is the most dialogue I have ever written in my entire life. And I am exhausted. I usually don't edit my work and if I do, it's only once or twice... but, dudes, I've been working on this thing since like three days after I last posted. Seriously. I need a nap...

So, dialogue has never really been my thing. But I'm satisfied with this chapter to move on and go forth and post this damn thing and never look back...

So, yes, I sincerely hope you all like it.

Love and kisses,

'Til next time,

AncientCovenants

* * *

**CHAPTER TWO**

"And you're a giant green rage monster… not seeing the imminent threat here…"

Well, at least Tony seemed to be taking the news remarkably well…

Steve looked at her slightly shocked, but surprisingly, without apprehension. It was more like he was trying to understand why this news was such a huge deal. Maybe it was just that he was from another time and therefore didn't comprehend the significance of the bombshell just dropped on them all. Or maybe there was a story there, some sort of reason why he was apparently at ease with all this… Natasha would have to find out later.

And Clint… well, Clint was Clint. It was as if nothing had changed between them… maybe nothing had. After all, part of the reason she owed him so much was that he was unconditionally and unwaveringly supportive of her—_no matter what._ Which, apparently, extended to finding out she was a vampire since, by the look in his eyes, she could tell he wasn't so much worried about his safety or anyone else's, as to wondering why anyone had bothered to raise an alarm and wake him from his sleep.

As for Bruce, even if he had pressed the panic button, he did still seem to be willing to listen. So, maybe there was some hope for him after all…

Which meant that there was still hope for her yet.

"Okay, how does no one else have a problem here? Even my other half is disturbed by this… I-I think he might even be a bit frightened."

Huh… there were things that scared even the Hulk…

Like vampires. Natasha thought that was odd. After all, the Hulk had indestructible skin… how would a vampire even pierce his hide with their fangs, assuming they even wanted to sample his impure, gamma-radiated blood in the first place? Wasn't that an interesting conundrum…?

"If it helps, he doesn't need to be. I'm not any more likely to kill any of you in your sleep now than I was before." She smiled her wicked smile, amused, but unlike the other times, this one had two very sharp fangs, pressing into her bottom lip, just short of drawing blood.

"Well… I guess the 'Red' in Red Room didn't just stand for the Communist Agenda…" Tony quipped, noticing Natasha's teeth.

Natasha swore she saw the Hulk twitch, despite the fact that Banner was doing an excellent job of keeping him in check.

"_Vam-pire_. _Blood-drinker_. _Night-stalker_. _As in deadly dangerous_… How can you all be so calm about this?! She murders people…"

"I'm an assassin. Killing people is what I do for a living." Natasha pointed out.

"Yeah, but most assassins don't drink their victim's blood!"

"That's a myth. Vampires don't need human blood specifically to live. A really rare steak will do." She eyed her discarded steak mournfully.

"And how do we know we can trust anything you tell us?"

"You don't. But you didn't know if you could trust me before, and you chose to take a chance. Nothing's changed; you just found out more about me."

Bruce narrowed his eyes but Natasha noted how his fists unclenched ever so slightly. It must have been taking him a great deal of energy and willpower to keep the Hulk in check and resist his fight or flight response, but she was glad that the logical part of Bruce was listening to her.

But even so, she still didn't want to risk moving, lest he perceive her as a threat, that is, a bigger threat than before. So they merely stared at each other, as if daring the other to blink. Finally, their stare-off was cut short as Steve interjected.

"May I say something?"

They jumped. It was slight, but it was there… not that either would ever admit it, but somehow they'd forgotten that there were others in the room besides them.

Everyone turned to look at the Captain. Natasha nodded her head, thankful for the reprieve from the Spanish Inquisition.

The Captain took a breath. "Vampires existed even in my day. In the neighborhood where I grew up, they were mostly horror stories some parents told their children to keep them in at night. But growing up, I never understood why there weren't any vampires in these stories that could exercise self-control. Then I went to war. It wasn't advertised but I wasn't the only 'super soldier' the army had in its arsenal. There were vampires, lycans, and other things that go bump in the night… I was just the most human.

"In the war, I had the chance to meet some of these super soldiers… and see what they were capable of first hand. They exercised an incredible amount of self-control, the likes of which were near-impossible to fathom. I once saw a vampire that single-handedly took down a trench of enemy soldiers. And even starving and exhausted from our journey there and covered in their blood, he refused to drink a drop of it. He told me then that though he was already damned, he would not add more sins to his sentence…

"I don't know what happened to him but he was one of the most honourable men I've ever met. And Natasha… she seems to be one of those vampires: honourable and with a great deal of self-restraint, someone I would be honoured to serve beside. I look at her no differently now than I have before tonight."

Natasha smiled an easy, toothless smile that sent Steve a clear message: _Thank you._

"Hold up…" Tony furrowed his brows as if trying to put together an intricate puzzle. "You said there were other super-soldiers… which makes sense, I mean, why put your eggs all in one basket, right?" Clint nodded in agreement. It did make more sense to have more than one super-soldier at your disposal… especially when their skill-sets varied. "But you said that out of all their already enlisted, let's call them, super-troops, you were the most human... but if you're not fully human, what are you?"

Steve looked down guiltily. "I was hoping you wouldn't catch that…"

Suddenly Natasha wasn't the only one with a deep dark secret in the tower anymore. She raised an eyebrow in curiosity at this sudden twist.

Steve took a breath to steady himself. "The super-soldier serum that changed me was based on dhampir DNA, so, if you strip down my DNA to its very core, I qualify as a Daywalker."

A Daywalker—a _dhampir_—part human, part _vampire_. A very small part, but still…

Tony gasped dramatically. "_Et tu_, _Brute_?"

Steve leveled him a look. "Funny, Stark. Very funny."

"I'm a funny guy. Oh, and brilliant… don't forget brilliant!"

"And modest, too… only you could make this all about you."

"Was that _sarcasm?_ I think that was sarcasm… Am I the only one who heard Captain America use sarcasm? _Correctly?_ JARVIS, please tell me you got that…"

Clint muttered something under his breath that only Natasha could hear. _"Normal is so overrated."_ She smiled. Of course Clint would find Tony and Steve fighting like an old married couple amusing.

"Okay kids, what do you say we leave mom and dad to their heated discussion over who's more pretty while the rest of us catch some Z's?" Bruce looked at Natasha hesitantly; Clint noticed. "We can discuss Tasha's eating habits in the morning." He offered.

"It is morning."

If looks could kill, the one Clint was giving Tony would certainly do the trick…

"Fair enough…" Tony smartly put his hands up in surrender.

"And for the record, I've known Nat a long time… and though I've never had any confirmation she was a vampire, part of me always suspected. In fact, I'd probably be more shocked if she wasn't…" Clint pointed out.

Even Bruce had to concede to that considering that half the things she could do were impossible, even for a well-trained human being. Suddenly Natasha secretly being a supernatural entity all along wasn't all that far-fetched.

And on that note, the team started to make their way back to their sleeping quarters.

"Hey, it makes sense…" Tony added. "But I still can't believe Natashalie's part of the living undead."

Natasha rolled her eyes, joining them as well now that Bruce was somewhat easier around her.

"I'm a vampire, not a zombie. Zombies don't exist."

"Says the vampire…"

Clint huffed in exasperation. "I still can't believe you don't believe in zombies. Especially after Haiti…"

"What happened in Haiti?" Steve asked curiously.

"It's classified."

Natasha may have been tight-lipped, but Clint wasn't. "She single-handedly took down a horde of zombies…"

"What—_seriously?_" Tony looked at her more intrigued than shocked.

Bruce cocked his head in inquisition. "How many zombies are we talking here?"

"50 to 60…" Clint readily supplied.

"10 to 20." Natasha corrected.

Clint, not to be deterred from the epic story of Tasha vs. Zombies, continued. "They were all big guys too. Local underground fighters, some military trained…"

Bruce stopped short. "There's no way you took out that many, superhuman or not…" he argued. "You're not just a vampire; what are you really?"

The others slowed to a stop. Natasha could sense it was going to be a long night, erm… day. "It doesn't matter…" she started hesitantly. "Technically, I don't exist. I _shouldn't_ exist…"

"Look we're all tired, but we've come this far… You've already told us that you're a vampire and most of us have accepted you as you are. I don't think revealing one more secret at this point is gonna change much…"

Leave it to Captain America to dispense sage advice.

Natasha worried her bottom lip, something she didn't do except in cases of extreme stress… which wasn't often. Finally, she spoke.

"I…" she took a breath to steady herself for what was about to come. "The Red Room made me a vampire… but I was born a witch."

She held her breath for their reaction. Tony started things off. He schooled his features into a mask that not even Natasha could read.

"A witch…"

"Yes."

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say.

"You're a witch?!"

"What-"

"_A witch?_"

"I don't practice-"

"I let you into my home…"

"Tony…"

"I let you manage my life…"

"Tony…"

"I let you near _Pepper_…"

If there was one word Natasha could use to describe him now, it would be _murderous_. She tried to defend herself. "Pepper was never in any danger-"

"We fought together and you lied to me…"

"I didn't lie… you just didn't need to know…"

"You've been lying to me the entire time I've known you!"

_'Well, yes, but only at the beginning and not about this…'_ Natasha thought. She was starting to get tired of this game. Maybe some assurances were in order…

"Tony… Look… if I was going to betray this team, I would have done so a long time ago. I'm still the same Natasha that fought with you and the Avengers to help save the world from the _Chitauri invasion…"_

_"Probably 'cause it'd be harder for you and your people to take over from an advanced alien race than us mere mortals…"_

_Natasha was too tired to try to follow his logic so she tried to get him to understand instead._

"My people-I don't have people. Before I defected from the Russia and the Red Room, I was an outcast amongst my kind. Neither side has ever fully accept me, and they probably never will… you guys are the closest thing to 'people' I have."

Tony, apparently, wasn't having it.

"We are _not_ your people. You're a _witch_…"

Natasha huffed in annoyance. He was fine with her being a vampire, so why was he being so damn unreasonable now?

"I haven't used magic in _years_… and even then, only in absolute emergencies…"

"How long have you been manipulating us? Twisting us, bending us to your own will?"

She blinked. Was that what this was all about? He thought all witches were inherently evil?

"That's dark magic. I haven't used the dark arts since I defected."

"Liar!"

Natasha sighed.

"Why would I lie to you now? You know I'm a vampire, you know I'm a witch… what else is there left for me to lie about?"

"I don't know, but you seem to have a lot of secrets for one person."

"We all have secrets Stark…"

"Yeah, you more than most."

Natasha bit her tongue to keep herself from strangling him. She took a deep breath and tried to reason with him one last time.

"Look, if once in a blue moon I do use magic it's of the white path variety-"

"And what does that mean?" Tony pressed. The others seemed to be following their argument like a tennis match, but now everyone seemed to be waiting for her to respond. At least Bruce seemed rather calm with this newest revelation.

She started to explain.

"The white path of magic follow the laws of nature. White path witches cannot destroy, only create, they cannot kill, only banish. They can cast spells of luck, good fortune, undo spells of evil, break a soul-bond between a dark witch and their chosen victim…" she glanced at Hawkeye, who looked at her with slight shock and awe. He hadn't known it had been more than a simple bump on the head that had gotten Loki out of his head. She continued. "They don't hurt, they help, they don't break, they mend…" Tony was shaking his head in denial. Natasha snapped. "And frankly I'm surprised you hate witches so passionately since you're dating one for witch's sake!"

* * *

**A/N: **Wait… what?! What just happened? I know right...

Cliffhangers, man, cliffhangers…

Hope see you next chapter!

- AC


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